August 30, 2007

It's not a bug

Dave at MacRaven sends a link to this picture of one of the funniest vanity plates I've seen.

Jay Garmon writes at TechRepublic, "It’s at times like these that I really lament the demise of the classic Volkswagen Beetle. Plus, mad props to the software development humorist who got that vanity plate."

Thanks for the tip

In a one-priest Irish Catholic parish everybody knew everybody else. One Saturday a waggish young lad by the name of Timmy went to confession. After hearing Timmy's sins the priest said, "Timmy, I have it on good advice that you're fooling around with one of the married women in the parish."

Timmy protested his innocence but the priest would have none of it. "Timmy," he said, "tell me, is it Mrs. Monahan?"

"No, Father, I hardly know the woman!"

"All right then Timmy. Is it Mrs. O'Connell?"

"Mrs. O'Connell! Father she's the wife of one of my very best friends! I'd never lay hands on her!"

"Timmy, this is your last chance, I'm losing my patience. Is it Mrs. O'Hara?"

"No, Father, I wouldn't dream of...".

"Timmy! I don't want to hear it. You've come to this confessional and lied to me! I want you to consider the seriousness of this matter for a month and come back and confess to me who it is."

On his way out, Timmy met a good friend of his on his way to confession. The friend asked Timmy, "Is the Father in a good mood today?"

A blog for anything

Alexander Zakharov has a blog named A Soviet Poster A Day. It features some nice artwork along with explanations of the posters; the legend on this one means, "To fly higher than all, farther than all, faster than all!"

Monster mess

August 24, 2007 (Computerworld) -- The last thing you need when you're unemployed is a bank account that's suddenly emptied. But that's exactly what some unwary users of employment search site Monster.com faced after identity thieves made off with the personal information of more than a million people looking for jobs.

This still-developing story has enough nooks and crannies to confuse a gumshoe, but some facts are clear: Monster's resume database was looted, and the personal information taken was used to forge convincing messages that deposited password-stealing Trojans and ransomware on users' PCs.

Aug. 16, 2007 - It was bound to happen. Now even a frown or grimace can get you into trouble with The Man.
“Specially trained security personnel” will be watching passengers for “micro-expressions” that will reveal treacherous agendas and insidious intentions at airports around the country. These agents, who may literally hold your fate in their hands have been given a lofty, Orwellian name: "Behavior Detection Officers."

Another solar-powered aircraft

Update: According to this article, Helios was designed to fly at high altitudes and set a record for winged craft of 96,000+ feet in August, 2001. It was lost when it crashed into the Pacific in June, 2003. And that "substantial" wingspan I mentioned was 247 feet.

Remember your cup

No Exit

Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

Roll-your-own wireless extender

This clip from DL.TV talks about the Windsurfer, a parabolic reflector for aerials on wireless routers. You can make these at home from aluminum foil and a piece of card stock, using a template from FreeAntennas.com. (We tried it and they're a piece o' cake to make.)

I think the video clip's a little long-winded, but it does explain how it works. If you're already up on the theory, then cut to the chase and visit FreeAntennas.com.

Cute ad

A new diet

After feeling ill for a number of months, a man finally decided to visit his doctor. The doctor performed a thorough physical. After reviewing all the test results he asked the patient to get dressed and come in to his private office.

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but you've got HAGS," the doctor said.

"Gee, Doc, I've never heard of that. What is it?"

"It's a combination of hepatitis, AIDS, gonorrhea and syphilis."

"What can you give me for it?"

"Well, for starters, we'll put you on a diet of pizza and pancakes."

"Will that cure me ?" asked the patient.

"Probably not. But they're the only things we can slide under a door."

Weekend Reading 24

In the modern world, science and society often interact in a perverse way. We live in a technological society, and technology causes political problems. [...] The public does not have much use for a scientist who says, “Sorry, but we don’t know”. The public prefers to listen to scientists who give confident answers to questions and make confident predictions of what will happen as a result of human activities. So it happens that the experts who talk publicly about politically contentious questions tend to speak more clearly than they think. They make confident predictions about the future, and end up believing their own predictions. Their predictions become dogmas which they do not question. The public is led to believe that the fashionable scientific dogmas are true, and it may sometimes happen that they are wrong. That is why heretics who question the dogmas are needed.

It has thousands of uses

CATLETTSBURG — The man whom police say robbed a local liquor store with his head wrapped in duct tape will find out next week whether the case against him will advance to the next step in the legal process.

Kasey G. Kazee, 24, is scheduled to appear before Boyd District Judge George Davis III for a preliminary hearing at 1 p.m. Wednesday.

Leningrad Cowboys

A dramatic entrance

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth went to see a Noel Coward-Gertrude Lawrence production at a London theater. As they entered the royal box, the whole audience rose to its feet to honor them. Gertrude Lawrence, standing in the wings, said, "What an entrance!"

One for the road

Several 911 calls alerted deputies to someone driving on the wrong side of the road, almost hitting people. [...]

"A 12-pack of Corona he was working on was left int he front seat, but he took one with him when he ran and we captured him with a beer in his hand," said Jeff Stonebreaker of the Orange County Sheriff's Office.

What a headline

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A groom wore a suit to his wedding in court in Jacksonville, but he'll be wearing a prison uniform for the next 18 months.

After pronouncing Ernest Stroming and Nitisha Jackson husband and wife Tuesday, a judge pronounced his sentence. That's 18 months for drug possession and fleeing police. Stroming told the judge he wanted to marry Jackson before going to jail as part of his commitment to straightening out his life.

August 10, 2007

That's gotta hurt...

BANGKOK, Aug. 7 — It is the pink armband of shame for wayward police officers, as cute as can be with a Hello Kitty face and a pair of linked hearts.

No matter how many ribbons for valor a Thai officer may wear, if he parks in the wrong place, or shows up late for work, or is seen dropping a bit of litter on the sidewalk, he can be ordered to wear the insignia.

Weekend Reading 23

This is really big news, and a fabulous example of why two-way scientific discourse is still valuable, in the same week that both Newsweek and Al Gore tried to make the case that climate skeptics were counter-productive and evil.

Climate scientist Michael Mann (famous for the hockey stick chart) once made the statement that the 1990's were the warmest decade in a millennia and that "there is a 95 to 99% certainty that 1998 was the hottest year in the last one thousand years." (By the way, Mann now denies he ever made this claim, though you can watch him say these exact words in the CBC documentary Global Warming: Doomsday Called Off).

Well, it turns out, according to the NASA GISS database, that 1998 was not even the hottest year of the last century. This is because many temperatures from recent decades that appeared to show substantial warming have been revised downwards. Here is how that happened (if you want to skip the story, make sure to look at the numbers at the bottom).

And here's a very interesting article about the consensus on global warming by a Canadian who set out to prove it: They call this a consensus?

Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Certainly there is no consensus at the very top echelons of scientists -- the ranks from which I have been drawing my subjects -- and certainly there is no consensus among astrophysicists and other solar scientists, several of whom I have profiled. If anything, the majority view among these subsets of the scientific community may run in the opposite direction. Not only do most of my interviewees either discount or disparage the conventional wisdom as represented by the IPCC, many say their peers generally consider it to have little or no credibility. In one case, a top scientist told me that, to his knowledge, no respected scientist in his field accepts the IPCC position.

This article links to a series of 22 other articles by the same author, Lawrence Solomon.

August 09, 2007

A super solution

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A New Zealand couple is looking to call their newborn son Superman -- but only because their chosen name of 4Real has been rejected by the government registry.

Pat and Sheena Wheaton say they will get around the decision by the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages by officially naming their son Superman but referring to him as 4Real, the New Zealand Herald newspaper has reported.

See Figure 1

Please stop submitting SPRs. This is our system. We designed it, we built it, and we use it more than you do. If there are some features you think might be missing, if the system isn't as effective as you think it could be, TOUGH! Give it back, we don't need you. See Figure 1.

Let us pay taxes?

When you think of a world in which pot dealers are begging the government to pay taxes, there's a good chance we're in The Singularity (or maybe The Rapture). Either way, here's hoping that California's top dog, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger--the only governor I can think of who smoked dope onscreen--takes them up on the offer.

Weekend Reading 22

This is not just hype -- it's dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption -- yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. [...]

So why bother? Because the whole point of corn ethanol is not to solve America's energy crisis, but to generate one of the great political boondoggles of our time. Corn is already the most subsidized crop in America, raking in a total of $51 billion in federal handouts between 1995 and 2005 -- twice as much as wheat subsidies and four times as much as soybeans.

Even if you like the idea of burning alcohol, you have to wonder why ethanol needs public funding. If it's such a great idea, can't a producers market develop without the subsidies?

Serendipitous search

Today I was looking for info on image reconstruction and I ran across a link to the Mathworks site. Mathworks sells MATLAB, a scientific & engineering analysis package with a fairly popular Image Toolbox. (So searches for imaging algorithms frequently show hits there.)

August 02, 2007

Only in China

First came round, open air urinals on the city's infamous "Foreigners Street," featuring tiny waist screens that left little to the imaginations of passers-by. Then came news of outdoor sinks, pictured at right, that made the hand-washing experience, um, different. Now comes news that the city has opened the world's largest restroom. The four-story, 1,000-stall facility features TVs, a soothing soundtrack piped throughout, crocodile- and Virgin Mary-themed urinals, and stalls with no roofs for those who prefer to relieve themselves al fresco. Says a local government official:

"We are spreading toilet culture.... After they use the bathroom [people] will be very, very happy."